


My Heart Upon My Sleeve

by orphan_account



Category: The Vampire Diaries
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's always about Katherine. Except when it's not. (Post 1.10)</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Heart Upon My Sleeve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Greensilver (Trelkez)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trelkez/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Greensilver! I hope you enjoy the story. I also want to thank threerings for beta duties.

Bonnie cleared the school doors Friday afternoon and pressed Elena's speed dial, holding the phone to her ear as she walked across campus.

"Bonnie, hi," Elena answered; she sounded distracted. "I'll be right out, I promise – Mr. Saltzman wants to talk to me about something –"

And Bonnie stopped walking.

Damon stood in the shade of a nearby tree, watching her. He smiled. There was an irritating condescension in the twist of his mouth, even in the line of his body before he straightened and walked toward her.

Bonnie couldn't seem to breathe properly. "Elena, I –"

"Five minutes, Bonnie, I promise," Elena said, and hung up.

Bonnie told herself to unfreeze; she put her phone in her backpack and waited. Damon had one hand in his pocket, and as he reached her he took out a long, faded gold chain. At the end hung a teardrop pendant, the same yellow-honey color as Emily's had been. He held it out to her.

Bonnie's mind went blank. She felt her brow furrow of its own accord. "Damon. What is this?"

He smirked. "It's a necklace."

There was a long pause.

For a moment Damon looked bored. "It's an apology. Sorry about the, uh – the neck." He didn't seem to care whether she believed him. He waved his hand dismissively in the general vicinity of her throat and then tilted his head slightly, looking at the smooth skin – no scar – where he'd bitten her, nearly killed her. He smiled a faraway smile for a moment, but when his eyes returned to her face he just looked cheerful and unrepentant.

She stared at him.

Damon rolled his eyes. "Will you just take it?"

She took the thing carelessly, holding it in her fist, and the clasp sliced into her finger. Of course.

"What do you want?" she snapped, and even though she was nervous – no, afraid – she was also just bewildered enough that she couldn't seem to get past really fucking annoyed. She shook her bleeding finger and then put it in her mouth, glaring at him, just waiting for some stupid joke. The pain was sharp and bright.

Finally, a genuine expression, enigmatic and – somber, maybe? He said, "We need to talk."

***

Emily had children, plural, so after satisfying himself that angry irrational pitchfork-carrying townsfolk wouldn't blame them for simply being a demon's servant's children, Damon figured they'd be fine with the paternal grandmother and fucked off back to the Confederate army. But he could read the writing on the wall, there, so he'd defected by November. He attached himself to the Union armies instead – battlefields were easy pickings – and met up with General Sherman in time to help them tear through Georgia. He glutted himself.

Then the surrenders started, and it all got boring, and Damon regained his sense of humor. He spent a decade or so leaving drained corpses in Stefan's wake. It seemed the thing to do. Not to reveal his presence would have been unbrotherly.

***

"You're going to make a new spell," Damon told her. "You're going to fix Emily's mistake. Betrayal." He paused. "Mistake."

Bonnie kept staring at him. She couldn't seem to stop. Then –

"No," she said, and was surprised and strengthened to hear something like Emily's steel in her own voice.

The smile disappeared lightning-quick. "You owe me," he said. He stepped forward again, his eyes focused and intent. "You'll make a new spell."

"There's something wrong with your eyes," she said flatly. She held the pendant out toward him again, but he didn't look at it.

He looked at the chain around her neck instead, the one that Elena and Stefan had given her, not old or valuable like Elena's – or the one Damon had just given her – but apparently just as effective. The charm on the end was tucked into her shirt, but she heard Damon mutter something about "vervain" anyway. She felt a rush of gratitude for the gift.

"Emily changed her mind for a good reason," Bonnie said levelly.

"Emily broke her word. I held to my end of the bargain." His eyes brightened in fake epiphany. "So you can hold to hers."

And again he was somber. He was so changeable that it was dizzying. Bonnie thought he probably knew that.

He finally looked at his pendant again, resting in her outstretched palm, but still didn't take it back. "You've already given it your blood. It's a start." But he kept talking – he didn't give her the time to be horrified. "I don't want the others," he continued, "just –"

"Damon!" It was Elena. Bonnie turned to see Elena walking briskly away from the school doors and towards them, and hastily shoved Damon's pendant in her backpack. Damon watched her do it and smiled. He raised his head again to watch Elena's approach.

Elena reached them and wrapped an arm around Bonnie's waist. Elena gave Damon a measured look, and Bonnie felt just a little stronger, standing beside her friend.

Damon rolled his eyes. "Stay away, blah blah blah, I get it."

He left. They left. Elena looked back once, watching him go.

"Don't," Bonnie said.

"What did he want?" Elena asked.

"Katherine."

Elena's face grew shuttered. "Of course he did," she said.

***

When Damon got home that night Stefan was practically lying in wait. Hilarious.

"Damon."

"Stefan. What, no hello?"

"Elena called. She said you were talking to Bonnie."

"Of course Elena called. You're welcome, by the way."

Stefan's eyebrows rose. "Right. You harassed Bonnie to help me patch things up with Elena."

"Anything for you, brother." Damon gave him his best sympathetic smile. "Don't worry. She'll get over that whole using-her-as-a-replacement-for-Katherine thing."

"That is not what happened."

Damon smirked. "You sure about that?"

"Yes."

"Well. She isn't."

"I love her. I'll convince her. I have to," Stefan said.

"I think I'm going to throw up," Damon said.

Damon waited. Three…two…one –

"Stay away from Bonnie. She can't help you, Damon. She _shouldn't_ help you."

Damon pulled a Brooding Intense Look. "I'll convince her. I have to."

Stefan sighed.

***

Damon returned to Mystic Falls in 1887 expecting to find Emily's children and perhaps a grandchild or two, but instead he found only one small girl, the rest of Emily's descendants having been tragically carried off by consumption (tuberculosis, not vampires).

Unacceptable. Emily's line being too precious to risk, Damon sold Katherine's stash of jewelry and anonymously arranged for the girl, whose name was Ruby, to be packed off to a boarding school for girls in France, far enough away that he could invent dead rich untraceable parents with relative ease. She would be rich. Things were easier for the rich.

He went to France on the same boat as she. He found her, looking stiff and mutinously uncomfortable in her fine new clothing, and told her that she would be teased and ostracized for her dark skin, but that she must be above that, because she would be better than everyone there, better than the daughters of counts or dukes or kings. He told her it was because she was the granddaughter of a dead witch who would someday free twenty-eight demons, but he made her forget that part.

Then he returned to the colonies. He retrieved Katherine's jewelry, dumped the bodies, and went to find Stefan.

***

It felt like hours that night that Bonnie sat cross-legged on her bed, in the dark, Damon's "gift" in her lap. Once or twice she picked it up by the pendant, held the chain over her other hand, and slowly lowered it, the chain pooling in her other palm.

Her room was dark, but light from the streetlight outside her window glinted off the chain, and every time, for just a moment, the teardrop seemed to catch and hold it.

Once she raised the clasp to eye-level and looked at it; in the dimness, her bloodstain seemed to be gone.

***

Ruby did well for herself. Married a school friend's cousin, a Baron something-or-other who split his time between Paris and Venice. But he went the way of all flesh and died before bothering to give her any children, and she didn't seem particularly inclined toward remarriage. This was a problem. Ruby spent her time in Venice, a dying city that Damon hated, and didn't do much of anything that Damon could tell.

He established himself at the proper station and slid into her circle – not that hard to do, as all that was necessary was to feign interest in the wailing that Italians called opera music and he called rabid cats having sex. The cats were singing Verdi's _Otello_ the night he met her.

Being invited into the box of her friend, he chose a seat next to her and spent most of the performance admiring the line of her neck.

Eventually, without looking away from the stage, she whispered, "You aren't paying attention to the music."

She wouldn't look at him, but he knew she was aware of him. He leaned closer, just a little, and set his mouth a breath away from her ear. He whispered, too. "I don't think you like it any more than I do."

She smiled but still did not look at him. "You should not be talking now. This is the good part."

There was something…unruffled about her. Damon decided to have a bit of fun.

He frowned, waited through what seemed to be a terrifically long note, and then put a little _persuasion_ in his voice. "I'm the good part."

"You think highly of yourself," she said quietly, but she turned to him to say it. With her movement a dark curl fell from its low knot, to curl in the hollow at her throat.

"So do you," he said, genially.

"So do I," she said, eyes clouded, smiling at him.

Wryly, he whispered to nobody, "But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve, for daws to peck at." He began to turn back to the stage, but she was replying.

Frowning, Ruby said, "How morbid you are."

"It was supposed to be romantic."

Unexpectedly, that also drew a smile. "Perhaps we should pay better attention to the performance." A couple in a neighboring box was glaring at them. Damon simply looked at them and they quickly looked back to the stage. He ate them later anyway, as a late-night snack.

***

Saturday evening Bonnie opened Grams' door and heard her voice drifting from the kitchen. Not wanting to disturb her until she was off the phone, Bonnie set her purse down quietly by the door and headed for the living room bookshelf, until she heard a male voice answering Grams'.

It was Damon's voice.

Bonnie hurried in to the kitchen. Grams wasn't on the phone. Grams was taking dishes out of the cupboards, and Damon was helping her.

Damon was there. Damon was in the kitchen, being charming and smirky and helping Grams get out the dinner dishes. He saw Bonnie before Grams did, and he passed by Grams to get to the fridge, and right as he stood beside Grams his wicked smile widened.

"Bonnie!" he said. "I was just talking about our history project."

"What? _Our_ –"

"So she invited me in." Bonnie shut up. He smiled. "To wait for you." Damon reached into the fridge and took out the milk, and Bonnie felt something akin to rage.

Grams looked up at Bonnie. "And for dinner."

Damon grinned. "And for dinner."

"You two can set the table."

***

Ruby loved opera but loved him more, which suited him in the short term. She didn't like opera quite so much after that first night, anyway.

So she hated opera, but loved Venice anyway. And it was all fun for awhile – a year, even, longer than he would have thought – but one evening he arranged for her to find him in bed with the lovely Maria Vanni, one of the fine noble wives of Venice.

When Ruby walked in Damon raised his head from Maria's neck and knew her blood was smeared across his mouth, felt it drip down his chin.

He waited for the screaming, and Ruby's eyes were very wide, but all she said was, "Is she dead?"

Maria started murmuring, though her eyes remained closed, so Damon didn't bother to respond. He wiped his mouth clean, licked his fingers, and leaned back on his elbows, considering Ruby. "You're not surprised."

Her breath was coming faster. She was starting to shake. "I didn't think you did this. Like. Like this."

"Ah. You don't remember, then; you've just…figured me out." He smiled almost whimsically.

Her hand flew to her neck. "You – have you –"

The smile turned mocking. "Of course I have."

She sat abruptly in the room's only chair, nearly fell upon it. She couldn't look at him; she looked at Maria instead, asleep on his bed. She laughed softly, and the sound was hollow and hoarse. "You were not what you are."

Just as abruptly, Damon stood and stretched. "I'm bored. Time to get on with this." He focused on her, put power in his words. He told her to forget the blood. He told her he'd betrayed her, and it was heartbreaking, blah blah blah, so she should run into the arms of a nice young idiot and have lots of babies.

Her eyes were unfocused and she was nodding, but she told him to go to hell.

He frowned. "And really, in the long run, you needn't remember me much at all."

"I won't remember you at all," she said, and her eyes were fierce and clear.

***

Bonnie all but stomped into the dining room, carrying her stack of plates. Damon was right on her heels.

"This is _not okay_. You have _crossed a line_, Damon," she hissed at him, slamming the plates – three, Jesus, was he really going to pretend to eat? – onto their places on the table.

He carried three water glasses and put them in place somewhat less emphatically. "Just do what I've asked," he said, a pained expression on his face – as though her _stupidity_ were _hurting_ him, the asshole – "and I won't have to."

Bonnie grabbed at the pile of silverware she'd brought and started separating them into individual settings. She slammed them into place, too. "Damon. Even if I wanted to help you –" she looked up and glared at him " – which I _don't_…I couldn't. I can't help you. I don't know how; I don't know what to do with your – with it."

Grams was walking in with a warm covered dish. Bonnie smiled brightly, and Damon was all charm again.

He took the dish. "I've got this," he said. "You can go back to the kitchen."

Grams' eyes went unfocused. "I'll just go back to the kitchen." She did.

Bonnie gaped in outrage, but Damon just rolled his eyes dramatically. "Don't look at me like that. It won't even work much longer. She's like her grandmother." Bonnie frowned; Damon looked just surprised enough that she wondered whether he'd meant to say that. It might be true.

"Damon. I don't know how. _Honest._ I can make feathers float. That's it. I can –"

"You'll figure it out." He looked pointedly at the door to the kitchen. "You have to," he added, and suddenly a fork had hurled itself from the tabletop towards him.

He caught it in midair and shook his head disapprovingly.

"I didn't mean to do that."

"I don't believe you. I don't care, actually. Listen –"

"No, you listen." Bonnie relaxed her clenched fists, reached up, and pulled the vervain charm that Elena had given her over her head and off. She took a deep breath. "Ask me now. I can only tell the truth, right?"

He was watching her closely, a curious expression on his face. "No," he replied. "It doesn't work that way. You'd die trying to do whatever I told you to."

"That explains Caroline," she muttered. He started to speak again and in a sudden panic Bonnie clapped her hand over his mouth. "Not another word."

He looked amused, but didn't move while she clumsily put the charm back on one-handed. His eyes gleamed as she lowered her hand.

Bonnie looked at him for a moment. "I can't help her," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."

The amusement vanished. "Figure it out," he snapped, and turned. Bonnie thought he might be going, but he stopped when Grams walked back into the dining room with another dish.

Grams visually measured the atmosphere.

"Is something wrong here?" she asked. _Finally_.

"Yes," Bonnie said.

"No," Damon said. He said it intently, but Grams was frowning anyway.

"Maybe you should work on your project another night."

"I want to work on it tonight," Damon said, eyes narrowed at her. Grams shook her head a little and then turned to look at Bonnie, setting her dish down.

Bonnie said, "He's not even in high school."

And Grams said, "I think you should leave."

"I think I should stay."

"I don't," Bonnie and Grams said together. Bonnie reached for her cell and started looking for Stefan in her list of contacts. Grams picked up a steak knife.

Bonnie pressed "Send" right before Damon took her phone. He raised it to his ear and a moment later said, "No, it's me." He paused. "Yes. Yes, I'm coming home. Eventually." He hung up and made an exasperated face, as though seeking sympathy. They stared at him with identical stony expressions, and he shrugged. "I was going anyway."

Grams said nothing, and Bonnie held out her hand for her phone.

"You do owe me, you know," he said, handing it back to her. "I'm the only reason you were ever born." He looked at Grams. "Her, too."

"Whatever. Get out of this house."

"I was invited." He started for the front door.

"I am _un_-inviting you."

"It doesn't work that way," he said again. He smiled and shut the door behind him, and the quiet click was no barrier at all.

***

It was February 1900, the ink-dark night spread out before him, hiding all kinds of fun. It was a new century. If Emily's line didn't produce a real witch soon, a proper one, then _she_ would never see it.

Stefan arrived quietly. Creepy, brooding bastard. "I haven't seen you in four years."

Damon snorted. "You haven't seen me in thirty, brother."

"Excuse me. I haven't been followed by a trail of dead bodies in four years."

"Oh." Damon contrived to look sympathetic. "Stefan, did you miss me?"

"No." Stefan didn't say anything, but his almost careful manner seemed to ask the question.

Damon didn't want to play. "I got bored with you."

"Damon."

"There's a lovely little blonde I know. I'm going to eat her." He smirked. "Then I'm going to eat her."

Stefan's face was suddenly shadowed, hard and _preachy_. "Damon. No –"

"Ciao, brother."

***

Stefan actually arrived on Grams' doorstep not long after Damon left, but Grams took one look at him and wouldn't invite him in. She gave him the stink-eye and shut the door.

Bonnie opened it and would have said the words – though who knew if Grams' house was enough hers that it would work – but Stefan just shook his head, and she didn't say anything.

"I just wanted to stop by," he said.

She nodded. "Thank you." He started to leave, but Bonnie said, "I'm mad at you, you know," and he turned back. "Elena hasn't told me why, yet, but I am. Whatever it is, you need to fix it."

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

She fidgeted a minute, then shrugged. "Could I get a ride home?"

He took her home. Grams said she could stay with her – or if not, that Grams would be happy to drive her – but Bonnie had something to think about and she thought Stefan would probably let her think in peace.

When she got home she called a distracted greeting to her parents and went straight to her room. She turned on the light and pulled the pendant – Damon's "gift" – out of the bright red sock she'd shoved it in. The ornate antique setting had cheery bits of red fluff stuck in it.

She couldn't find her blood on the clasp under harsh fluorescent lights, either.

She put the pendant on. It was short – it hung between the chain of the vervain charm, and couldn't be tucked under her shirt. It was nice, but it looked pretty awkward with a hoodie.

She looked down at it. "Can you protect me?" she whispered. She thought of Damon in Grams' house. She thought of the bookshelf at Grams' house, full of her family history. She thought of the power she had felt, when Emily controlled her – a power she could only barely access, now. She didn't take the pendant off. It felt like potential.

She didn't go to see Damon until the next night, because she didn't think she wanted Stefan to be there when she did.

And then Damon looked surprised to see her, which was gratifying, but not to see that she wore the pendant, which was not. He smiled.

"I'm not Buffy," Bonnie said.

He did an ostentatious, dramatic double-take. "Thank you for telling me."

"You're thinking, 'Bonnie can't hurt me. She can't lift a five-pound dumbbell and she throws like a girl.' But – I am a witch. And I think I'm a powerful one." Bonnie paused. She felt preternaturally calm. "And if you go near my grandmother again, I will go on the Internet and I will buy a crossbow. And I will shoot you with it."

He was looking at the pendant again. And smirking. Always, always smirking. He stood casually in his own home, his space that she had invaded, and seemed to own the very air. He stood at ease, dark and beautiful, and his expression was halfway between a smirk and a sneer because he was getting what he wanted.

"I don't know that I can do this. And I'm only doing it if I can figure out how to get her out alone. _Only Katherine_, Damon. And you have to promise she won't hurt anyone here."

"I promise," he said easily. Great. So he saw no problem with lying to her – probably thought it was payback for Emily's broken promise.

But maybe Bonnie could find something she wanted here, too. "I'm serious, Damon."

He looked at her straight-on. "So am I."

She nodded slowly. She held his gaze. "Okay, then. Tell me everything you know about what Emily did."


End file.
